It's become clear to me that we are a country obsessed with the weather.  And I'll go ahead and say it -- I'm as guilty as anyone.

If we're anywhere near a television set when the local news comes on in the evening, we have to catch the weather report.  Even if the call comes from the kitchen, "Dinner's ready.  Come and eat!"; many of us will reply, "Just a minute, let me watch the weather."  Even if it's your favorite -- soup beans and cornbread -- you still have to watch to see if it might rain tomorrow.  Maybe it's a southern thing.

And we don't care about the other news of the day, just the weather.  Congress may be voting on healtcare.  Troops may be fighting in two wars overseas.  Italy's president might have gotten bashed upside the head with a statue of a church.  Aliens may be descending upon a farmhouse in the small town of Appleton, Minnesota.  But none of it matters!  "Just let me catch the weather.  If it rains, I'll need to wear my John Deere ball cap to work tomorrow."

How did our grandparents survive 70 years ago without a nightly weather report?  Or even without a TV?  The answer is simple:  they had a magic 8-ball.  When they asked it if there would be rain tomorrow, they might get the answer "Try again later."  That wasn't very productive.  Yes, we've certainly come a long way. 

Or have we?  Why are we so obsessed with what the weather will be?  We're sure to catch the First Alert Storm Team at 5:00, and then -- just to make sure -- we stay tuned at 5:30 to see if there have been any new developments.  Is that enough?  Certainly not.  We have to watch again at 6:00 to watch the "Chief" Meteorologist because we can't take the word of the second-string meteorologist that we heard at 5:30.  Even that might not be enough, because immediately after the weather on one channel, we're grabbing for the remote to catch the tail end of the weather on "the other channel".  Finally, we're so exhausted that we fall asleep and nap through the very weather we just learned about four different times!

Folks, we have weather every day.  Always have, always will.  From one day to the next, there's nothing we can do about it.  Maybe we should just be surprised by the weather each day and weather the weather we have, whether we like it or whether we don't.